My heart breaks for this boy and his family

Parent Cafe
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<p>CBreeze, aside from mocking me, what was the point you want to make from the article you cited above?</p>

<p>Situational naivete - wha? </p>

<p>Most of the time a child is lost in that community, the child is found within the first 2 hours. This is estimated to occur approx. 10 times daily.</p>

<p>And that’s the actual situation.</p>

<p>Once in never, a child is abducted by another observant male adult, smothered and butchered to death. </p>

<p>Obviously we should all now begin to walk through Brooklyn and stare at every observant male adult with deep suspicion. If we are not situationally naiive, we’ll consider the possibility that each and every one of them is the next killer of 8-year-olds. Right? Because we want to be savvy.</p>

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<p>That was an information which is contraindicative to your 99.999999999%. </p>

<p>Everyone on this thread is just heartbroken about the boy what is your point in this

</p>

<p>We are not focusing on that, if you read the whole thread.</p>

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<p>I agree that that is how you perceive me.</p>

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<p>Thank you for editing the extremely unkind things you said to p3t, cbreeze. They were not only unduly harsh, they smacked of anti-semitism. JMO.</p>

<p>I believe I read that amongst the meds given to the young boy were anti-psychotics. Those are not meds that many people have lying around on their coffee table. As more emerges about the perptrator, the more pieces seem to point to serious mental illness being a large part of the picture.</p>

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<p>CBreeze you are making it impossible for others to follow this thread. You throw out an insult or comment. When I respond to it, you go back and change your most recent post. As a result of your actions, the flow of debate in the above half dozen or so posts between us now makes no sense whatsoever to other readers.</p>

<p>Under these circumstances I can’t continue to discuss anything with you. I’m sorry about that.</p>

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<p>This is just very off topic but here, anything unfavorable to Jewish parents are anti-semitic. There are just a lot of posters who dog Asian parents relentlessly and given a pass.</p>

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<p>No, it is the other way around, cbreeze. Some posters, whe feel like they get “dogged”, all too often post comments that are condescending or insensitive. Often feels like it is done purposefully. They may incidentally share a nationality, but that is a side note. </p>

<p>I have said my peace about the offensive comment that was made, You edited most of it. Again, thank you for rethinking that.</p>

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<p>I think the fact that he used anti-psychotics as part of the drug cocktail is going to make it a lot easier for his lawyer to plead insanity.</p>

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<p>I really don’t think we can blame the parents – in hindsight with 20/20 vision, it is easy to say I would’ve or they should’ve…… </p>

<p>The question regarding Aron’s mental state …. Is/was he psychotic or psychopathic?</p>

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<p>I do not blame the parents one bit. Not an iota. Would not blame them even if what they did was something I would never do with my kids. This is beyond blaming anyone but the perpetrator for, and it is a very rare thing to have happened anywhere; just not rare enough. </p>

<p>I am always insisting that my high schooler stays with a group when he walks from the train station to school and back because it is the type of behavior that I hope stays with him. I have no fear, even with this horrendous thing that happened that he, or any other kid will be accosted by a maniac. It’s just that all sorts of other things can happen when you are walking alone, and the chances do go up in a highly populated area with many, many different types of people. The kids have been approached regularly by those wanting “spare change”, some lone kids have been mugged and relieved of their cash and cell phone, all in safe neighborhoods. My kid got lost; completely turned around when he well should have known the way, and yes, he was alone that day. </p>

<p>This Levi Aron is truly a dangerous person the way his mind works. I don’t know whether to be glad to find out that the young boy was drugged before he was killed or not. Apparently there was a struggle of sorts. Clearly, Aron, had plans to kill the boy; it was not like he suddenly killed him. How his twisted brain worked to come to this idea is chilling. </p>

<p>I have a personal interest in what happened here because of some work I am doing with those who have executive cognitive disorders which really wreak havoc on their lives. Many of these young men; it just so happens they are just men that I know, not women, have broken the law for some crazy reason that fit their way of thought that just would not be the way most of us think. I have a cousin who fits in this category too, and he has had a tremendous amount of trouble because of the way his mind operates. Academically, he is fine; he graduated with honors from college. But in social and personal situations, especially with people he does not know or unfamilar settings, he has done some strange things that have gotten him in trouble. I think that these days, he would have been dxed on the spectrum for autism and a lot of work, patterning, counseling is done for kids who are so dxed, but he is my age and was just always considered a little weird, something he did not outgrow and did turn out to be a problem. </p>

<p>It seems to me, however, that in the last 10 years, despite all of the advances in working with those with these issues, it has been far more stressful and painful for those adults who have these problems. Even among the regular population, young people, especially young men seem to be arrested and have police records more than in the past. Army recruiters have told me that waivers have to be gotten nearly universally for new prospects, something that was not the case 10-20 years ago. </p>

<p>This does not make any group of people more dangerous. I think there is a an area that most of all us do not enter which is that which causes direct harm to anyone. Normal people do not hit, strangle, poison people, much less go into the grisly area of cutting up a body. Once ANYONE is identified as able to enter into this zone without a reasonable cause (self defense or defense of others), they are dangerous regardless of mental abilities or lack there of.</p>

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<p>I also want to add that a lot of the ideas that are coming out of this tragedy, really would not necessarily have averted it. Kids, and adults don’t always think the way they should in terms of who to ask and where to go when they are lost or need a question. Designating a place on each corner of a block as a “safe zone” only works if one can truly vet those there and you don’t always just get lost in areas that have them. Really, a buddy, or better yet, cluster system should be organized anytime walking to an event. I find it surprising that Leiby was the only one walking the direction that he was going. No other kids from camp going his way? It would be nice if kids went together in groups.</p>

<p>Hopefully, the community relaxes from the panic that has hit them with this horrible tragedy. I don’t think it is a reflection of anything. Just a random event and the perpetrator is some one terribly sick and dangerous, with the dangerous part emphasized. One is always in danger of trouble when in the company of someone who is dangerous because there is no telling what someone like that would do and that is irrespective of any mental or other issues that the person would have. That designation can universally be applied to our population. It’s not possible to tell by just looking at someone or knowing him, even to say s/he is dangerous. What happened was such a fluke, a tragic one.</p>

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<p>Can we blame Zina’s parents for allowing her to run into the alley behind her house to look for her little siblings? The predator was on the prawl, and sooner or later he would have found his victim. It could have been Zina or anoher little kid. Given the chilling details about Levi Aron’s past, I feel that the same thing happened here - Aron was determined to cause harm to a child, and the poor little kid just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I hope the monster will be locked up for good and never released into the society no matter how well he takes his meds in prison.</p>

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<p>I agree with CPT and with P3T.
The fact is that this kind of incident is VERY RARE. Thank goodness. And yes, I do believe that 99% percent of the time, if a child approached an adult looking for help, the child will receive help. it is because that 1% is so incredibly horrible to contemplate that we need to prepare ourselves and our children for that remote possibility.
I think as far as this perpetrator goes, it will be easy enough to find out if the anti psychotic meds were his or if he got them another way. Just because he had them doesn’t mean he was the recipient of the prescription. The determining factor is an insanity defense is whether the accused understood that the crime was wrong. It seems, from what we hear now that he was very aware.</p>

<p>CPT,
I’m curious. What does Executive Function Disorder mean?</p>

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<p>It means someone with these issues has problems dealing with the day to day of life. There are some geniuses who have this issue. As long as someone else deals with their day to day lives, they can excell. They cannot make many of the decisions that we automatically do each day, many times a day to get through our day. If it is charted out and scheduled, such folks can do well, but if something comes up that is new and not listed, they do not deal with it the way we would. There is a screening for it, and for most people, that test is ridiculously easy, but for someone with the disorder, unless they have already been told what to do in a particular situation, they are at loss as to what the solution is and can just as easily come up with a totally inappropriate response. </p>

<p>My cousin was in a car accident some years ago. He had been told what to do if that should happen, but whoever told him did not feel it was necessary to preface all of this with the fact that if someone is injured, that the first thing to do is to call 911 and the police or any authorities to deal with the injury. The first question he had for the person pinned behind is dash was the insurance/registration information, and he wanted to take pictures of the damage. This was looked upon very badly. Fortunately the person was not so badly hurt, but you can see how this is a huge problem. You have to preface every procedure with things that are urgent that anyone who has any common sense would know intuitively. Often, someone like my cousin has gotten into trouble with authorities for things and they have a great fear of that. They don’t have the capacity to weigh one issue over another and have to use a set of rules to make that decision and that can get them in ever so much trouble. </p>

<p>Those on the autistic spectrum almost aways have this issue. I think most of my kids have this problem to some degree–most kids do; we see this in the boneheaded things they do that make us just shake our heads. But usually as they mature and gain experience, they do learn. Some slower than others, but they do learn. My oldest was in a car accident some years ago, and his first response even though, yes, he could have lost his driving privileges, it was his fault, or so it seemed, was whether the other party was OK. That was the first thing that came to his mind. And he was much younger than our cousin when this happened. Also my son is no great shakes in his “executive functions” in terms of dealing with much of his life, but certain common sense priorities are there ingrained. </p>

<p>Do look it up as I am not giving precise definitions.</p>

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<p>Administering drugs could still fit in with his “panic” story. He may have realized he was going to kill the child and wanted to make it easier and possibly knock him out. Or he may have had him drugged from the time they got into the house. I do hope he had less awareness of what was happening to him as a result of the drugs.</p>

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<p>Thanks, CPT. It is interesting and I will definitely look it up.</p>

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<p>The drugs are going to make it harder for an insanity plea as it shows that he certainly had the presence of mind to sedate the boy and plan out his murder. It also seems to me that it is now a premeditated murder rather than a panicked reaction as his confession indicates. </p>

<p>I don’t think it matters whether he was insane or not, nor whether it was premeditated or not, except in terms of some personal understanding of why he would do something like that. I can see where someone in an abrupt outpouring of fear or panic doing something harmful, just as I can see it when someone is angry. I don’t excuse it, but it is something that we all know happens. A reaction causing harm that a person would not do without that adrenalin rush. But concocting a drug cocktail and then suffocating the child and then cutting him up is not a sudden reaction to something. There is a thought process that had to occur. And this is where even more of the horror of this comes into the situation and truly separates Levi Aron from others who might panick or get frightened. We just would not cross that line, and even more of us won’t deliberately plan to do so. He is a dangerous person and should not be released and to me this is a DP case.</p>

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<p>Yes, I think you summed it up nicely. I don’t think New York has a Death Penalty, does it?</p>

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<p>I was certainly not blaming the young boy’s family, although I would not have let my child walk alone in that or any neighborhood at 8 years old. I agree that had he asked for help from most anyone else, a quick phone call would have been made. He happened upon a seriously disturbed man who took advantage of this situation. Much more details will be revealed as this case continues to unfold.</p>

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<p>No, as I mentioned in earlier posts, there is no DP for all intents and purposes in NY. I believe that the DP should be used very rarely, but this is such a case, as this person is clearly dangerous to others which to me is the most compelling reason for that sentence. </p>

<p>The mother was not comfortable allowing the boy to walk home alone either from what I have read about the case. It was his first time to do so, and the family had prepped him on the route. He had apparently begged to be allowed to do this. The alarm was raised quite early in this case as the parents were anxiously awaiting him a the end of his route. That all of this had to come together like this is just tragic.</p>